In a world of fact checkers, everyone lies.  It’s become a sub-genre of our media, one side accusing the other side of lying.  Both of our POTUS candidates have an intimate relations history that is less than admirable.  Some days I wake up and look at politics and want to run away.  It seems like it is a cesspool.  The stakes are way too high to ignore it, as my instincts dictate, but I really hate feeling like I have to shower several times a day.  I get that we are all sinners, and each of us misbehaves in some fashion.  But it used to be that our politicians at least tried to hide their foibles and act as examples.

When I was very young and entering Christian ministry, I sat with a man that I hoped would be a mentor.  He was too busy to mentor me routinely, but he handed me a piece of paper with this written on it:

 Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.

That’s 1 Timothy 4:12 – Paul writing to the young Timothy that he has set loose into the world.  I wish I could say I have lived up to that entirely, but I too am a sinner.  But I can say I have tried.

They say, “politics is downstream of culture.”  I think that is right – I also think that is why our politics have turned into a cesspool – we live in one.  It is stupid for me to expect our politics to be better than us.  If I want politics to be better, then we have to be better – we have to endeavor to take the advice given to me so many years ago.

This morning, as we head to church, let’s not worry about politics, let’s encourage each other to be examples “of those who believe.”  If we do that the politics will work themselves out.